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A Simple Fix for a Tragic Mistake?

By Lisa Belkin August 28, 2009 11:23 amAugust 28, 2009 11:23 am

Several months ago, Gene Weingarten wrote an extraordinary story in the Washington Post about “the perfect storm” of factors that lead parents to lock the car and forget a child inside. As Weingarten explained:

What kind of person forgets a baby? The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.

And while Weingarten’s article was only about cases within the United States, it also happens elsewhere in the world. In Israel two years ago, the death of a one-and-a-half-year-old led two inventors to create what sounds like a simple system for preventing these tragedies.

The website Matzav, quotes Israeli engineer Idan Nahami, who built the prototype with his brother-in-law, Mashe Attias, describing the product:

This is a very inexpensive system that is compatible with any car seat and can be installed yourself. Our patent includes a special light bulb that must be screwed into the car’s light fixture instead of the regular bulb. This light bulb, in addition to acting like a regular light bulb, sends out an infrared signal as soon as the door is open and the internal illumination is automatically activated.

The second part of the system includes a cushion installed underneath the car seat or booster seat the child sits on, or on the back of the seat. This cushion is activated as soon it detects that something is sitting on it, and initiates a ‘dialogue’ with the infrared light. The cushion also has a buzzer that goes off as long as the door is open and the child is sitting in the seat.

“If a car can give a warning that you left the lights on when you open the door, why can’t it do this for a child left in the back seat as well?” said Nahami, who is negotiating with “various chain stores” to market the system, which is expected to sell for about $25 dollars.

By way of reminder, and until technology catches up with human vulnerability, you can find tips on preventing this kind of mistake here.

Thanks to Chavi Cohen for sending along the links to this story.

From Lisa Belkin: A reader, Michelle, sent this link to a similar monitoring system, which sells for $40 and is already available in the US. Thanks Michelle… And if anyone knows of other similar devices, please send those along, too.

WOW! That was a very productive comment, Lolly! Thanks! Tragic accidents happen only to those silly working moms! I should have figured that out. Very insightful…you and your lifestyle ARE better than everyone else’s! Happy now?

Maybe when your husband drops dead or walks out on you and you have to go get yourself a job to support yourself and your kids, you may–just for one moment–be able to accept that a perspective other than the one you have TODAY, is actually valid.

I have thought of this so often, and although I do not have the financial resources, I think something could be invented that goes through the seat belt system. My car beeps at me to remind me when my seatbelt is not fastened. Presumably it is triggered by the fact that the circuit is not completed by the closing of my seatbelt. It seems that something similar could be designed when a car seat is installed in the back seat of a car. After all, there, the seatbelt is buckled, and I think that the fact that the circuit there is closed could trigger a signal to the parents, so that, when the door is opened, a special alert was signaled.

Something similar occurs when my keys are in the ignition.

Or my headlights are left on.

Why not for my child buckled in the backseat?

I would pay for it.

Roughly 280 children have died since 1988, I think (yeah, I have read up on the issue). That’s too many, and it is so easily PREVENTABLE with modern technology! And I would bet that the manufacturer who does first incorporate such technology will see a jump in sales, too. Parents who leave their children in the car are not BAD PARENTS. They make mistakes and those same GOOD PARENTS would be willing to show brand loyalty and pay additional money to avoid a mistake like that.

oh my god – that article from the wp was so heart wrenching and hard to read. but i’m glad i did. i just want to wake up my little guy, 16 months, from his nap and clutch him to me.

anyone could make a mistake like this, given the right circumstances. it’s sadly no different than any mistake you might make – a car accident, burning yourself while cooking, losing your wallet… logically, you know how to avoid these things, but sometimes mistakes happen and you can only hope the results are nowhere near this real and this tragic.

while 99% of the baby products out there are a waste of money, resources and attention, a car-seat baby-in-car indicator is a necessity. my car warns me that the passenger airbag is off when the seatbelt is undone and a heavy package is placed on the seat, so why not add this feature to the back, for carseats?

@lolly–hmmmm, I don’t know…but I CAN answer the questions:
*”When was the last time you heard of a stay-at-home parent parking a kid in front of a TV set for hours a day?”
*”When was the last time you heard of a stay-at-home parent self-medicating to excess with alcohol/drugs while caring for the kids ?”
* “When was the last time you heard of a stay at home parent involved in the murder of her own children?”
And of course, my favorite: “When was the last time you heard a stay-at-home parent being snide, smug, and judgemental?”

signed, Stay-At-Home Parent, Eyes Rolling

From Lisa Belkin: Play nicely boys and girls. We are talking about preventing a human mistake here, no need to peck at each other. And, for the record, both stay-at-home parents and drive-to-work parents have had this happen to them, though it does appear to be more common with working parents — and not all of them were Moms.

A free suggestion I read in another article on this topic: always place your purse/briefcase/etc. next to the car seat – this prompts you to always look at the car seat before leaving the car…it prevents a parent from absent-mindedly grabbing his/her bag and jumping out of the car while the child is quietly sleeping in back. It’s free and it works!

These cases make me feel sick to my stomach – imagining what the poor child goes through then the guilt suffered by the parent (or caregiver) then the reactions (horror, anger) of the other loved ones. It really is too much to contemplate.

I remember the first time I was hit hard by a case like this – Years ago, a four-month old baby died in a car the summer that one of my babies was five months old. I thought long and hard about whether that “could” happen to my husband or me. (Of course it “could”…) So I went about ensuring that it *wouldn’t* happen to us. I used the low-tech method of putting my purse under that baby’s feet whenever I drove him around.

Old habits die hard. My last “baby” is a strapping, loud pre-schooler and she still has to deal with my purse or bag under her feet when I take her anywhere! Thankfully (most days) she does not sleep in the car and tends to offer a running commentary every step of the way.

Actually, my first reading of the title of this post had me remembering the last paragraph in the original Washington Post article and wondering if Balfour had helped the Harrisons by serving as a surrogate . . . it might not have been simple or a fix, but it would have been a better ending.

I can see this happening easily. Mostly women are just stressed out. We have to do it all and then some. This all goes back to working and trying to be a good parent. Pick this up, drop this off, keep things balanced and bing……you forgot your baby!

Somebody help me out here please: I don’t mean to sound above this issue, but I don’t understand how this is possible. What happens? Talking on the cell phone or other multi-tasking? Completely sleep deprived? Over-medicated? So stressed out that you lose sight of your Reason For Being in the back seat? I’ve been all of the above (except over-medicated) and it still seems inconceivable that this could have happened with either of my 2 kids (and, incidentally, I’m a working father). Whatever the reason, I can’t help but think there’s a connection to the insanely frenetic “modern lifestyle” that most of us lead.

Intellectually, I understand that “it can happen to anybody”, including me. After all, the “absent-minded professor” gene runs strong in my veins and I forget and misplace things constantly. But my heart says that forgetting my sleeping infant in the back seat is about as likely for me as forgetting to breath.

From Lisa Belkin: Have you followed the link above and read the original piece? I would have said exactly what you just did until I read Gene’s remarkable reporting. Now I am humbled (and terrified) by the realization that no one is immune.

When my son was 5 months old I was driving to work. I meant to drop him off at daycare first, but I forgot. I got halfway to work and glanced in my rear-view mirror and saw him. I turned around and drove back to daycare and dropped him off. I could have easily not looked back and seen him. It scared the bejeebus out of me. I’ve been hyper-aware of him when he is in the car seat ever since. It can happen to anyone – even caring, involved, loving parents. My heart breaks every time I hear about an incident.

I do not believe that it could happen to anyone. I do not believe that because there are some commonalities. While lolly has poisoned the well on the topic, it is wishful thinking to dismiss the work connection.

In fact, it seems to be the strongest connection among the cases (although not present in all) that the parent was on their way to work and the child was in the backseat. So the monitoring system, instead of demonizing working parents, seem a wise solution.

Having said that, I am torn on what should be done with parents when this does happen. As a former nanny, I feel sure that if this had happened to the child in my care, I would have been charged. It is true that the parents suffer, but we used to excuse parents who killed their own children through drunken driving with the same excuse.

The car seat monitor sounds like a fantastic device. It’s easy to think that parents who leave their children in a car are just bad parents, but it sounds like most often it’s a horrible, horrible mistake that really can happen to anyone.

Life is busy and distracting. It can take time for the human brain to fully adjust to a new person being around so that he or she can’t be forgotten.

When my second son was 6 weeks old, we spent a few days at a lake cabin. A bat got into the main room where we were eating and flew wildly around causing panic among all of us there. I grabbed my two-year-old and rushed into an adjoining room, forgetting entirely about the baby sleeping in his car seat near the dining table.

Remembering this episode gives me some understanding as to how anyone could forget a baby in a car, often with tragic consequences. Sometimes our brains fail us. So it is worthwhile to seek out electronic devices or other means of jogging the memory to prevent this horror from ever happening.

This is my worst nightmare. I once took the “holier than thou” approach and condemned the parents who forgot their children in their cars…until I had 3 kids to look after and drop off in different places. Granted, I’ve never forgotten any of them in the car but I can completely see how such a tragedy can happen.

It is from stories like this that I learn my most valuable lessons though. I try to think, “Yes, this could happen to me” and make great effort to not repeat such horrible mistakes.

I am so happy to hear that products are coming onto the market to address this problem.

I gre up in the 70’s, and children weren’t dying in parked cars back then. Air conditioning was a luxury and windows had to be manually rolled up and down. On hot days people habitually left the windows rolled down by an inch or so. Even a kid left in a car would not get much hotter than the ambient outside temperature — and if they did, their screams could be heard.

What’s happened since the 70’s? Air conditioning is now uibiquitous and windows can no longer be opened manually, so now we all drive with them up, and leave them up when we park. We’ve done a better job soundproofing cars to minimize road noise. With the windows up, cars are now soundproof — so now a kid stuck in a car won’t be heard by passersby. And of course we’ve made great strides keeping kids safe in a moving car, but now a little kid can’t get out of his seat or open the back door even if he did.

Bottom line — Too many children have died in parked cars because we don’t want to address this as an technological problem. Despite countless examples to the contrary, we think parents will never be so sleep deprived, or so frazzled, that they would forget their child is asleep in the back seat.

We should not be relying solely on parents to prevent these deaths. We don’t do anything like that in industry. When lives are at stake, we don’t solely rely upon the operators — we install guardrails, alarms, automatic sensors, or other systems to keep people safe.

I’m so glad to see someone addressing this child safety problem with an engineering solution, instead of just castigating the parents.

About

We're all living the family dynamic, as parents, as children, as siblings, uncles and aunts. At Motherlode, lead writer and editor KJ Dell’Antonia invites contributors and commenters to explore how our families affect our lives, and how the news affects our families—and all families. Join us to talk about education, child care, mealtime, sports, technology, the work-family balance and much more